About This Image

Street scene in Europe, probably Paris.

Jaroslav Rössler was born May 25, 1902 in Smilov near Německý (now Havlíčkův) Brod, Czechoslovakia.

Rössler was undoubtedly one of the most important representatives of Czech avant-garde photography during the 1920s and 1930s; on an international scale his works rank among the earliest and most progressive examples of the application of abstract art and Constructivism in photography.

The beginning of Rössler's career is closely linked with František Drtikol, a classic name in Czech photography in whose Prague studio he trained in the years 1917-20 and, with minor breaks, he worked as an assistant for the next five years.

The first half of the 1920s saw the advent of a whole series of compositions containing the minimum of motifs which, apart from the photographs of Alvin Langdon Coburn and Paul Strand or the photograms of Christian Schad and Man Ray, represent the first radical works which responded to abstract art. This period of Rössler's work is typical for its fusion of a number of seemingly incompatible styles. During this time, when he was still inspired by Symbolism, Pictorialism and Expressionism, he was also producing photographs and drawings quite devoid of literary content in which he distinctively reacted to Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and abstract art.

Radio motifs appear on a number of Rössler's photographs and collages. He shared an admiration for modern technology with the other members of the Devětsil Artists' Union into which, on the recommendation of Karel Teige, he was accepted in 1923 as the only photographer. Some of Rössler's works were published in avant-garde magazines such as Pásmo, Disk, ReD, Stavba, among others, which also occasionally printed his theatre shots taken from productions at the Liberated Theatre in the years 1926-27.

Rössler spent the period 1927-35 (in addition to a short stay in 1926) in Paris with his wife Gertruda and small daughter Sylva where he worked for several important photo studios. Here he produced a number of Constructivist photographs and photo-montages featuring motifs of the Eiffel tower and other Paris sights, striking photograms, other minimalist compositions and numerous modern advertising photographs.

The years after Rössler's return to Prague in 1935 signaled a lull in his own work; at this time he occupied a small studio in Žižkov and produced only a few photographs and photo-montages and a collection of drawings from 1949 inspired to a certain extent by the work of Josef Šíma

It was not until the end of the 1950s that Rössler became active once more; with imaginative experimental photographs incorporating photo-montage, the multiplication of motifs using optic prisms, the Sabattier effect, negative enlargements, combinations of photographs with letters and numbers and other special procedures, he thus again became involved in the current trends in Czech fine art and photography, as represented for example by the Informal movement.

His partial recognition was not to come until the 1970s when Anna Fárová, Petr Tausk, Antonín Dufek and Martin Stein, in particular, shared in the gradual discovery of his work, one of the true merits of modern Czech photography.

Jaroslav Rössler died in Prague on January 5, 1990. He is buried in Olšany cemetery in Prague.

(Bio courtesy of Vladimir Birgus)

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